ganic and organic
being, up to Eden and to man. Beyond this point the work of creation
stops; but there is to be an occupation and improvement of the whole
earth by man spreading from Eden. This process is arrested or impeded
by sin and the fall. Here commences the special province of the
Bible, in explaining the means of recovery from the fall, and of the
establishment of a new spiritual and moral kingdom, and finally of the
restoration of Eden in a new heaven and earth. All this is moral, and
relates to man, in so far as the present state of things is concerned;
but we have the commentary of Jesus: "My Father worketh hitherto, and
I work;" the remarkable statement of Paul, that the whole creation is
involved in the results of man's moral fall and restoration, and the
equally remarkable one that the Redeemer is also the maker of the
"worlds" or ages of the earth's physical progress, as well as of the
future "new heaven and new earth." Peter also rebukes indignantly
those scoffers who maintained that all things had remained as they are
since the beginning; and refers to the creation week and to the deluge
as earnests of the great changes yet in store for the earth.[21]

It is indeed curious to observe how in our version of the Bible this
idea of progress in the universe, or of "time-worlds," as it has been
called, has been variously replaced by the words "world" and
"eternity," owing to the defective ideas prevalent at the time when
the translation was made. In the Hebrew Scriptures the term _Olam_,
"age," and in the New Testament the equivalent term _Ai[=o]n_ have
been thus treated, and their real significance much obscured. Thus
when it is said, "by faith we understand that the _worlds_ were
framed," or "by him God made the _worlds_,"[22] or that certain of
God's plans have been hid "from the beginning of the _world_,"[23] the
reference is not to worlds in space, but to worlds in time, or ages of
God's working in the universe. So also these ages of God's working
are given to us as our only intelligible type of eternity, of which
absolutely we can have no conception. Thus God's "eternal purpose" is
his purpose of the ages. So when he is the "King eternal,"[24] and in
that capacity gives to his people "life everlasting," he is the King
of the ages, and gives life of the ages. So in the noble hymn
attributed to Moses (Psalm xc.), where our version has, "from
everlasting to everlasting thou art God,"[25] the original is,